Genre: Dystopian

For two hundred pages I questioned why I was reading Klara and the Sun which for the most part, is a introspective and quiet story of an AF (artificial friend, think of M3gan without the horror malfunctioning) observing and learning from human activity around in her adopted household. An artificial friend resembling a doll of sorts, Klara spends an awful lot of time thinking about the sun (yes there’s reasons for that) and watching over a young but weak girl named Josie and her childhood life. However, there are signs and a slow foreboding sense that nothing’s is quite right but it takes a close look to notice it under Klara’s well-meaning yet unreliable narration. (On an unrelated note this book was an absolute pain to get and read for me locally, I had to wait 6 months on a library hardcopy waitlist and the ebook copy I had a hold for still currently has a 20+ week wait). To say anymore would potentially give away the surprises and dark developments left in the last 100 pages, but needless to say things go dystopian really really fast. I’m accustomed to the more stereotypical takes on the dystopian genres such as…

Note: The following original review for this book is old and does not meet current review standards. A fully rewritten review is planned. A classic I never got around to reading during school, as others have praised the concepts and themes hold up remarkably well. Some aspects such as the controlling history and the narrative can even be seen today in the form of “Fake News” or social media trends and hypes. I found the first 2/3 of the book to be a dry and uninteresting read where I was speed-reading to get through it (the tone and characters were not to my taste) and there’s some questionable takes on how women are portrayed (though again, this is written in the 1950’s which is to be expected to a certain degree) but thinks got a bit more interesting at a particular tuning point near the end of the book. It’s portrayal of Stockholm syndrome was interesting and complex (which is even more impressive considering the term and definition of Stockholm syndrome wouldn’t be discovered for another 20 yrs) and you never know where things will go as is the norm for George Orwell novels (apart from leaving a rather pointed statement…